Cavada derailed on journey to Paris

Hitching his wagon to Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP train didn’t help Jean-Marie Cavada, the French ALDE MEP.

He resigned his post as chairman of the European Parliament’s civil liberties committee in January to concentrate on a career in national politics. He stood in the French local elections as candidate to become mayor of Paris’s fashionable 12th district, at the head of a UMP list with Christine Lagarde, France’s finance minister. Cavada received only 35.23% of the vote, losing to the socialist Michèle Blumenthal. Cavada will remain as an MEP, though not a committee chairman, while also being a councillor in Paris. Sarkozy’s people also suffered in Strasbourg, which fell to the Socialists. The city had been run by the UMP, with Fabienne Keller as mayor and Robert Grossmann as deputy. But the Left Union list of Socialist Roland Ries took the city with 58.33% of the votes compared to Keller’s 41.67%. Would it be too much to hope that Sarkozy might now be more inclined to give up Strasbourg as the seat of the European Parliament?